Puzzle

A child-like housewife discovers her own voice in this beguiling remake of the Argentine drama Rompecabezas.

Piece meal: Kelly Macdonald

The puzzle
in question is of the jigsaw variety. It is one of the few pleasures that Agnes
allows herself, in between caring for her husband, and her two sons, all the
cooking, the housework and her commitments to the church. Somehow, by arranging
all these myriad cardboard shapes into their correct order gives Agnes a sense
of control, of finding a way to complete the puzzle of her life. As the film
opens, we see her preparing for a birthday party: arranging the decorations, hanging
the banners, baking the cake. Unfolding in upstate New York, the scene has the
aura of a Norman Rockwell painting, a depiction of a homely, bygone era. Then,
two things hurl us into the slipstream of the story: we find out that Agnes has
been preparing her own birthday party and that, besides a 1,000-piece jigsaw
puzzle, she is given an iPhone. However, it is the first present that
inadvertently leads Agnes to a new life…

Marc
Turtletaub’s Puzzle, from a
screenplay by Oren Moverman, is an American remake of the 2010 Argentine film Rompecabezas. Like such modest classics
as The Lacemaker, the Brazilian Hour of the Star and the more recent Daphne, it is a timeless character study
of a woman side-lined by life. Agnes certainly has the measure of her routine,
counting down the seconds until her alarm clock goes off, silently mouthing in
advance the predictable platitudes that emanate from her blob of a husband (David
Denman). She is of another time, she is even naïve, but she is not stupid. And,
then, on a whim, she starts to succumb to her whims…

The film is
not unlike its protagonist. Its wider ambitions materialise slowly and while it seems to
occupy a modest, even safe mind-set, it has the intelligence to feed out its
story in its own time, without pandering to the impatient. The result, then, is
a splatter of surprises, as our heroine gathers courage to pursue her own
dreams and to find her own voice. As Agnes, the Glasgow-born Kelly Macdonald is
delightful, plausible and childlike, grabbing the reins of this star-making
opportunity with quiet conviction. From her film debut in Trainspotting (1996), Ms Macdonald has carved out an impressive
portfolio (No Country for Old Men,
Swallows and Amazons, Goodbye Christopher Robin) without gaining international
stardom. However, nobody could have predicted Sally Hawkins’ sudden Hollywood supremacy,
so why not Kelly Macdonald? It’s about bloody time.